


Give it all away

by ninemoons42



Series: Love, Love [3]
Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Holocaust, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, M/M, Mind Meld, Nightmares, Paralysis, Teamwork
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-29
Updated: 2011-06-29
Packaged: 2017-10-20 20:51:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/216977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42





	Give it all away

  
title: Give it all away  
author: [](http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**ninemoons42**](http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/)  
word count: 5,185  
fandom: X-Men: First Class [movieverse]  
pairing: Charles Xavier/Erik Lehnsherr, implied Hank McCoy/Alex Summers  
rating: R  
notes: Mild spoilers for the movie; an AU for the ending in which neither Erik nor Moira are responsible for Charles's condition. This is the conclusion to the story begun in [Back down to the earth](http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/179460.html) and continued in [Before they take it from our hands]().  
beta: [](http://www.livejournal.com/users/kiyala/profile)[**kiyala**](http://www.livejournal.com/users/kiyala/)  
Title and cut text from Take That, "Love Love".

  
He wakes up with a quiet cry.

Nightmares. Not his own. A sweet smoke hanging heavily on the wind, grey ash falling everywhere. Men and women hard at work, sorting clothes and jewelry and shoes and great piles of human hair. Their eyes sunken and unseeing, their hands darting and jerking. Hunger, thirst, cold, and the thick stench of fear.

And overlaid atop that: sun, sand, an incongruous blue sky. An image of himself lying face-down and unmoving.

Charles opens his eyes. Sweat cooling on his skin, and he touches his temple. Someone in the house is tossing and turning – and only one person can be having dreams of barbed wire and striped uniforms, and of that day in Cuba.

His pyjama top is soaked through and he makes a small sound of disgust as he rips it off and throws it in the general direction of the laundry basket – and for once he actually makes the shot. But there’s no time to be happy; he changes hurriedly, throws on his dressing-gown, he’s half-slithering into the chair and he’s out the door.

Halfway down the corridor he realizes that Erik’s in his room; he’s upstairs, _shit_ , now what?

Nothing for it, he’s not going to wake anyone up just to help him get up the steps. No one is awake, anyway, and no one else will have to know.

Out of the wheelchair and on to the first step. Easier to do this facing the bottom of the staircase. Charles pulls himself up, step by step, and he’s surprised at the seeming lack of effort. On the landing he peels up his sleeves and he laughs, a little. His own forearms corded with muscle; his callused fingertips.

He’s sweating a little and he dashes his hair out of his eyes, starts to crawl. Erik’s door is at the end of the corridor. _Erik. It’s Charles. Let me in._

Click of the lock, and he pushes in with one shoulder, and crawls across the carpet. The lamp throws a thin golden light across the room. The chair next to Erik’s bed holds a stack of books; he carefully transfers the lot to the floor, uses them to hoist himself up.

And he looks down at the man in the bed.

“Do I want to know,” Erik mutters, “how you got here from your room? Or am I still dreaming?”

Charles snorts, once, and he reaches over to pinch Erik’s arm.

“I am awake, stop that,” Erik huffs. He sits up.

“You woke me up,” Charles says. “I came up here to see if you needed any help.”

Erik pales a little, and looks away. “Apologies.”

“Now stop that,” Charles says, as firmly as he can. “How many times must I tell you, you are not to apologize for your nightmares?” He scrubs a hand over his face. “I’m just glad we don’t have any other telepaths yet. I might make you apologize to them.”

Erik shrugs. A bleak look in his eyes.

“Can I help you,” Charles asks.

“No,” Erik says, but he reaches a hand out to Charles, tries to soften his words. “There is nothing for it but to simply find something else to do.”

“Is that why I can sense you training in the middle of night?”

“Yes.” Erik attempts a smile, but it is wan and lifeless. “I seem to be good for nothing except keeping you awake. And you in a state like that.”

He shrugs, though it is of course not _nothing_ , and he has no idea of how to distract Erik now, except – “How about a match, then? Chess, _eskrima_...I’ll even go out and run with you.”

Erik’s expression goes blank for a long moment, but then he gives a sharp little nod, and he gets out of bed.

“Right, then, give me a moment and I’ll get changed,” and Charles is halfway down the stairs when he’s being lifted and he _squeaks_ , he actually squeaks, when he looks up into Erik’s face. “What?”

“Faster this way,” is all Erik says, and Charles buries his blush in his hands, and he doesn’t look Erik in the eyes for the rest of the day.

///

Hank has been dividing his time between training, building a new Blackbird, and putting together a new version of Cerebro, and Charles has been spending many hours with him, and sometimes he comes to meals with a dark light in his eyes and ink all over his hands. He tells the servants to take two laden trays down to the basement every night and the dark circles under his eyes are growing, and no one can find it in their hearts to object.

And so it’s no surprise when the house wakes up and the first thing Erik feels is _pride_ , mixed with _accomplishment_. He doesn’t need Hank to tell him to come to the laboratory, and he’s not surprised when Moira and the others are peering in, and he’s certainly not going to judge Alex, who collects Hank once he comes back in and forces him to sit down and stay still. His rough hands against blue fur.

Cerebro’s platform is a little higher, and Charles rolls easily up the ramp and he doesn’t have to reach up so far for the helmet.

There’s a noise from outside – it’s Sean, complaining about Raven’s grip on his hand – and Charles closes his eyes. The machinery hums around him, the lights flickering as he reaches out.

And when he shouts in triumph and in pain, when Raven and Sean cheer and Hank slumps in his chair and closes his eyes at last, Erik doesn’t question his own instincts. He strides up to the platform, offers one hand – and Charles, even lost in Cerebro, doesn’t miss, and that hand is white-knuckled around his.

He knows he’ll be carrying those five bruises for a while, and it doesn’t matter. He hangs on, lets Charles hang on.

It’s the icing on the cake when Charles comes back to the real world, looks him in the eyes, and says, “I might just have found Shaw.”

///

Every morning, now, the first thing he does is to check in with Cerebro.

He doesn’t believe in destiny; he doesn’t believe in coincidence.

To find Shaw when he hadn’t even been looking for him, when it was a _bloody test run_ on Cerebro: this is something he has no words for.

But he will be grateful for it, as he’s grateful that Erik has finally agreed to his proposal.

After he finishes confirming the new set of coordinates for other mutants, he’s just about ready to go down to the Danger Room when Hank calls him back. “Professor.”

“Yes, Hank?”

“Here,” Hank says, and he’s holding out two sets of _baston_. “It’s a specific type of hard plastic, wrapped around a core of reinforced iron,” he explains. “You can fight with them, and Erik can use them for whatever purpose he has in mind....” He looks pleased and shy at the same time.

Charles smiles up at him, grabs his hand and shakes it hard. “I will be sure to explain this to Erik. Thank you so much, Hank. For all of your hard work.”

“I just want you to beat that son of a bitch Shaw,” Hank says, and he’s turning red-faced even as he’s swearing, but he’s smiling, he’s meeting Charles’s eyes proudly.

“I might want a word with Alex,” is all Charles says, though, and he chuckles when Hank reacts by groaning. He looks like he’d like to pound his head against the nearest hard surface. “I’m joking, Hank.”

Hank tries to grin, and that’s when he winks and _summons_ Alex, and he rolls out of the laboratory feeling pleased with himself.

When Erik raises an eyebrow, Charles merely grins some more, throws him the other pair of _baston_ – and then he’s charging forward, sticks held securely in his hands and he watches Erik’s eyes go fierce, watches him smile, and just like that the match is on. Clack and snap of the weapons as they exchange strikes. He’s waiting for Erik to figure out the extra bit, and he attacks as hard as he can, and he barks out a laugh when he manages to hit Erik’s arm.

 _Wait, that actually stings, what happened?_ Erik is actually broadcasting at him and Charles backs up, braces himself because the light bulb can’t be very far off and then it’s all he can do to defend himself as Erik throws one of his sticks forward, straight toward Charles. He crosses his own sticks in front of his face.

The strike never comes.

Instead, Erik is smiling, hand still out as he holds the stick in place, just a hair’s-breadth away from Charles’s defense. “Hank?” is all he asks.

Charles nods.

“He’s done such excellent work.” Erik calls back his stick and peers at it carefully, lets it turn over and over in midair. “We’ll have to do something for him.”

“And for Alex,” Charles says, and he laughs when Erik looks at him with some consternation, lets the _baston_ drop back into his hands. “You didn’t know?”

“I presume you did.”

“Only because Hank told me the truth,” and Charles resheathes his weapons. The leather pockets on his wheelchair are a recent addition – a gift from Raven. “I only had my suspicions before that.”

“They were sleeping on each other’s shoulders for the first few nights after we brought you back here,” Erik says, and he’s standing with his arms crossed, his brow creased in thought. “Perhaps that might have been a fairly obvious signal to the others, as well.”

“They did that?”

“In Moira’s room, of course. They were never unchaperoned.”

And Erik rolls his eyes, of all the things, and Charles has to look away and hide his grin.

“That’s a relief.” And now he shivers, a little; the sweat from their sparring match is starting to evaporate in the cool air of the Danger Room.

Erik is at his side in an instant, kneeling on the floor next to him. “You’re not supposed to overwork yourself just yet, Charles.”

“I rather think now would be a good time for it. After all, it is now only a matter of time before we fight Shaw – and that certainly counts as overwork, doesn’t it?”

Erik looks grave for a long moment, and then he nods reluctantly. “Point taken. So what else do you want to do now?”

“A practice run.” He raises his hand to his temple.

Erik nods and gets to his feet. He paces. “A tricky balance, to still have walls and yet let you in completely.”

“Not exactly what I had in mind,” Charles says, and he shrugs when Erik raises an eyebrow. “Do you trust me enough to drop your shields completely? Because I thought I’d take over that function for you, too.”

“And my free will?”

“Completely yours. I would never take that away from you.”

“So what are you planning exactly?”

“Merely to be useful to you.” Charles shrugs. “To protect you while you fight.”

“At the risk of being repetitious, you’re asking a lot of me, and of yourself.”

“It’s what I can do, Erik.”

Pause, pause. Charles considers giving up and trying again on the morrow – but then Erik is back and he’s pressing a hand to his shoulder. Charles’s hand comes up of its own accord to cover it. “You know I trust you,” Erik says. “I just don’t know what to make of your proposal; I have never had the chance to work so closely with another, before. Not for long periods of time.”

“We won’t know till we try.”

Erik shrugs. “Granted, then.”

“Derailed again,” Charles complains, good-naturedly, and he turns away, he puts his other hand to his temple, lets his thoughts flow towards Erik. Through their hands, still joined on Charles’s shoulder.

 _Hello, Erik,_ he says by way of preamble. _Let me in._

 _Still skeptical._

 _I know,_ and Charles smiles, lets Erik see his amusement. _Just like the day you moved the satellite – ah, yes, thank you._ He turns away from Erik’s memories, from the dark places inside his mind. He builds a wall to protect him, brick by brick between him and his enemies. _This is just a demonstration, you understand – there’s nothing to defend against here._

Erik snorts. _“Nein.” I am living in a house full of teenagers. Hormones everywhere I turn._

 _That’s supposed to be my problem,_ Charles grouses. _The only people kind enough to shut me out are you and Moira and Raven._

Pause, and then Charles says, _We need a distraction now. Hold on a second...._ And he detaches, and he calls out for his sister. _Raven? I may need some assistance._

 _You’re not in trouble?_ she asks.

 _No, but I will need to make Erik believe he’s in danger. I need you and your abilities._

 _That’s disgusting, Charles,_ she says after a moment.

 _I’m just as unhappy as you are about the whole idea, but I need to be able to demonstrate._

 _All right, all right, but you’re going to owe me._

 _When have I not?_

Back to Erik. He looks up, at the bleak determination in his eyes. “My apologies.”

“I know what you’re trying to do.” _Forgiven._

And it’s not Raven who comes in a moment later, but Azazel – the teleporter – and Charles hears someone shouting.

He doesn’t know if it’s him or Erik – or if it’s both of them.

And he watches Erik fight the image of Azazel, summoning four sticks to dance an intricate rhythm of attack and defense. He calls out to him: _Remember this is Raven, please don’t hurt her._

 _I know that._ Erik responding, as though from a distance. _And it feels like there is an utter stillness in my head. It’s all so easy._ The sticks whirling faster and faster, dizzying curves, until not-Azazel slows and stops, pole-axed. Red skin shifting back into blue, and Raven staring in astonishment.

“That’s pretty damn amazing,” she says.

And that’s Charles’s cue – he withdraws from Erik’s mind, lets the walls come falling down gently, and when he’s grounded back in his own body he can feel his pulse beating, a rapid and excited rhythm. He takes back his hands and he looks at them, the gloves and his red fingertips, the adrenaline pounding through his veins. “Agreed,” he says, and looks at Raven. “Thank you.”

“No problem.”

To Erik, he says, “You are a wondrous person, do you know that?”

“You have convinced me,” Erik says after a long moment. And then he grins. “You’re not so bad yourself.”

Charles nods back, and he can’t quite contain his grin, or the warmth in his hands.

///

He’s been on edge, waiting for the call to come. Too much talk of strategy and tactics; it’s time and past time to act. He redoubles his training and that of the children; if he pushes them a little harder, no one complains. They’re all restless now.

When Charles’s voice suddenly thunders in their heads – _Suit up. Blackbird, ten minutes_ – Erik feels a profound relief washing over him, though that doesn’t stop him from being the first into the hangar and into the tiny locker room. He all but jumps into his suit; he checks to make sure his pair of _baston_ are ready to use.

Charles is already dressed and in the Blackbird and he’s briefing Hank – he brushes past to hear them talking about coordinates and weather conditions. Alex is very nearly sitting shotgun, Sean is muttering prayers under his breath, Raven looks like she’s meditating, and Moira is holding on to a sniper rifle.

“Everyone ready?” Hank finally calls. A chorus of affirmatives.

Erik looks up, to Charles securing his wheelchair to the flight deck, and he doesn’t question the instinct that makes him take Charles’s hand.

Charles grips back, and it’s the same hand he’d offered when they brought Cerebro back online, and Erik forgets about being bruised, forgets everything else except this man, this team, these children fighting for a dream, fighting for each other.

“Intercept!” Hank is yelling after what seems like only a few moments.

Erik stares as Charles slithers out of his chair. “What in all the hells are you doing?”

“Something I’ve done before,” is the quick reply.

He quickly snaps off his seat belts and he’s picking Charles up, he’s carrying him roughly across to the bomb bay doors. The night stretches out around them, fog and the waves moving far below.

He watches as Charles squirms off, lies down on his belly, peers intently at the darkness – and then: “Angel,” he whispers, and he’s shouting, “Sean! Alex!”

“Professor,” the boys call back. Alex slaps Hank’s shoulder twice and Sean is throwing himself out the doors, it’s just like that day in Cuba, except that he’s suddenly coming back for another pass to catch Alex as he jumps out and they’re easier to follow, the yellow of their suits standing out in the night.

When Charles looks up for a brief instant and pins him down again with those determined eyes, he catches his breath – and he’s caught off-guard when Charles beams an image directly at him. An island, human bodies littered carelessly about, a flash of white silk. A man pacing down a corridor, a man who is closed off to the world.

Sebastian Shaw. _Herr Doktor Schmidt._

And Charles’s voice, breaking him out of the red rage that boils up in his mind. “Erik. Let me in. We start now.”

Erik’s thoughts dissolving into a faint image of distant walls. He can feel Charles looking out through his eyes. _The stillness, Charles,_ he says, and there’s a glimpse of a smile and that blessed quiet falling around him like a hammer blow. The razor’s edge, poised perfectly between the extremes. Charles wrapping support and encouragement and reason around him.

 _Are you ready for this,_ Charles asks, just like on that sunny day.

This time he knows that the answer is a firm _Yes_. And that’s when Erik hoists Charles up onto his back – shouts of warning from Raven and Moira, and a sudden overwhelming wave of trust rolling over him and everyone else – and they’re falling out of the sky together. Erik is controlling the metal in the zippers of their suits. All he needs is a thought and they’re flying, easily covering the distance.

He can feel Charles’s arms locked around his shoulders. He sees through Charles’s eyes. Closer and closer the island comes.

There’s a scream from somewhere, and a lurid red light, Alex cursing at Sean – “Let me go, you idiot!” – and suddenly life and war blazes around them, metal calling to him. _Charles? I’ve found them._

 _I know. Can you fly me after Sean? I just need to get close enough to knock out their teleporter._

It doesn’t surprise him to hear the hard note in Charles’s mental voice, the rage and the terror and the sharp bittersweet tang of revenge.

Charles is still talking, but to Sean: _Guide him toward me, Sean, I’m hiding Erik and myself._

He calls, _You are dead set on dealing with him, aren’t you?_

Flash of that day in the old Blackbird, of the team vanishing and a hand reaching out for Erik himself. _I have my reasons._

And Erik thinks about knives, and a sharp smile, and – there, there’s that flash of red skin and yellow eyes again and Charles screaming a strange kind of wordless battle cry.

Azazel falls out of the sky, plummets into the water.

He doesn’t surface.

 _You’ve got him,_ Erik says.

 _I have dealt with him; he was the greater threat. Alex and Sean can take care of Angel and Riptide. Time to get into Shaw’s stronghold._

There is a sudden mental image of two hands joined tightly together, confusing him for a moment because he doesn’t know where or who it’s coming from.

 _Erik!_

He opens his eyes; they’re almost on top of the island. _Important things seem to happen on islands._

 _That is the truth,_ Charles says, wryly. A faint undercurrent of fear and of pain, quickly suppressed. And then, out loud, “Am I inconveniencing you? Having to be carried around like this?”

“Do you hear me complaining?” Erik growls.

“No.”

“Then stop worrying about it. And let’s keep moving forward.”

///

The base is empty. A wise move on Shaw’s part in any case. The guns and the uniforms on the men scattered about, unconscious or dead, are not a danger.

The woman standing in the corridor ahead, however, is.

Emma smirks and folds her arms, but there’s no mistaking the undercurrent of wariness. She’s only partly transformed: her arms up to her shoulders; her entire lower body. She’s wearing some kind of unusual armor protecting her torso and her neck.

Erik barks out a laugh. “Afraid of me, then? Afraid of us?” His shoulders shifting, his pair of _baston_ lifting easily into the air – and whirling into a familiar and intricate pattern, the defensive spiral from that first session in the Danger Room.

Emma’s eyes narrowing, and then she’s flowing forward, diamond-hard hands up in an attacking stance. She tries to block the sticks, to brush them aside – and that’s when Erik releases the _second_ set, the one he takes from Charles’s own pockets. Four sticks in a deadly dance and the world stops when Emma begins to scream. The _baston_ raining down sickening cracking blows onto wrist and knee, battering at her – and then all four acting in rapid concert, pinning her by her wrists and ankles to the wall.

Erik is flashing back to Russia, to the bed with the metal frame, and Charles smiles and shakes his head, sends him a quick flash of amusement – then sends him back into the fight, watches as Erik pulls a knife from somewhere in his suit and holds it at Emma’s throat. “You know what I can do with this,” he growls, and she stills.

“You can both go to hell.” Emma glares pure hatred at them both, at himself, and Charles smiles in what he hopes is a proper imitation of Erik’s grin.

“I am already there, Emma, but thank you very much all the same.”

“Charles,” someone is saying, from an incredible distance, like a warning?

And he blinks and he takes a deep breath. Erik is shifting under him, trying to better balance his weight. “Thank you,” he says, quietly, and he looks at Emma and he waves his hand, thinks, _Go to sleep,_ and she does. To Erik: “Let her go. She’ll be down for a long time.”

“And when she wakes up?”

“When she wakes up she won’t remember Shaw, the Hellfire Club, or this night. A wall between her and the memories, and a suggestion to do some penance. A year out of trouble, perhaps, and then I can try to find her again.”

Erik is looking over his shoulder the best he can, looking at Charles with hard eyes. “You have changed.”

“As you keep telling me. I have had to. For the children’s sake, for your sake. And for my own.” Charles sends him an image: tossing by himself in his bed, his legs refusing to respond to his brain or to his own powers. Thinking about how he could have prevented that terrible day. _I needed to wake up; I knew nothing of the world. I was such a fool. Shaw was – a nightmare for me, too, for as long as he’d left me in pain. But it was a nightmare that helped open my eyes._

 _Charles. Don’t break._

 _With you and the children around, I have hope that I won’t._

“Well, this is a sweet and touching discussion.”

He sighs, and Erik growls low in his throat – and Charles tightens his grip on Erik’s shoulder, leans into the back of his head. _Stay with me, Erik, I’ve got you._

 _How will you stop him from talking? That damn helmet...._

 _That wasn’t what I had in mind,_ Charles says, and then he thinks about pulling a blanket over their heads. A silence over his ears and over Erik’s. _If you don’t look at his face you won’t have to read his lips, too._

 _Thank you,_ Erik says. After a moment he adds, out loud, “I have no intention of listening to you, Schmidt.”

Charles covers his sudden smirk with his hand.

 _Erik?_

 _Charles._

 _Ready to fight?_

 _Yes. Here and now. We’re ending it._

Charles laughs, then, and he relishes the flicker of surprise, so brief it’s almost gone before Shaw’s face can even register it.

He watches over Erik’s shoulder as Erik raises one hand, palm out, towards Shaw – and he doesn’t question the instinct that makes him reach out, to close his fingers around Erik’s outstretched ones. He opens his mind completely, extending his mind to encompass Erik’s, up and out and so far that he can even sense the children flickering on the edges of his reach.

He lets his power stop just short of including Shaw.

 _What are you doing?!_ Erik’s voice, loud inside the sudden silence of Charles’s mind.

 _Shielding,_ he whispers. Aloud, he says, “Feel that, Shaw? Your weakness. No one can reach your mind while you’re wearing your helmet – but you can take from the people around you, you can draw power from them to add to your own. And so: you’re a parasite that can’t survive for long without your hosts.

“And that was all they ever were to you – they were your hosts! The Hellfire Club, the men in the concentration camps, those soldiers you were manipulating! An extra source of power. Well, and how do you feel now that I’ve cut you off? There’s no one else here but my friends, no one here but me and Erik – and now you can’t even find us, not with all the strength you have, not with all your abilities.”

Shaw blinks, opens his mouth to speak.

And everything happens at the same time:

Erik sends his _baston_ flying at Shaw, three to attack and one to bend into a hook, to lift his helmet off his head.

Charles flicks his fingers once Shaw’s face is revealed, and Shaw is caught and frozen. There is a sudden fear in those eyes, now. “And what do you wish to do with him, Erik?”

“I could ask you the same,” Erik replies, and he’s striding forward, stopping just an arm’s length away from Shaw. “His sins against me and mine – his sins against you. Which one of us has the greater claim on him? Which of us can judge?”

“It would be madness to leave him alive. He will not change. Too much hatred of that which is not him, _homo sapiens_ and mutants alike. He would only try, and try again.”

Erik nods. “And the alternative?”

“To kill him,” someone else says.

Moira, standing in the doorway. The children behind her: Alex and Hank, their hands joined; Raven and Sean. They all look determined.

The rifle cocked and ready in Moira’s hands.

“I am still an officer of the law; I’m just not carrying a badge,” she says. “And badge or not, I’m still capable of using lethal force.”

“Are you sure you want to do this?” It’s Erik who asks the question.

Charles already knows what her answer will be.

Erik shrugs when Moira only draws a bead on Shaw. “Suit yourself. Charles?”

“Yes. Come along,” he adds, when Erik strides past the others.

No one flinches when the shot booms throughout the corridors.

He doesn’t release his grip on Shaw until he’s sure that he’s dead.

///

 _Six months later_

Sweat on the sheets. Erik gasping above him, rough sounds spilling from his lips. Charles is willing himself toward orgasm, is pushing Erik towards his. He can feel Erik falling, falling over the edge, and then there’s a shout and Erik is coming, hot jets across Charles’s skin.

It takes Erik a few minutes to come back down to reality, and Charles amuses himself by running his fingertips across the lines in his lover’s face, across his thin lips, curved in a smile.

“My god, Charles, you’re amazing,” Erik says. He’s pulling Charles in close.

“I do what I can,” he says, and he reaches up to Erik’s damp hair, tugs a few strands between his fingers. “It makes me happy that you enjoy what we do so much.”

“Modest, too.”

A comfortable silence falls, and Charles is unwilling to break it – so he reaches for Erik’s hand, grips it as firmly as he can. _I do like being connected to you like this. I like your hands._

 _As I do yours._ Erik’s mental voice is a deep and sated rumble. _You’ve spoiled me, you know. I never used to do anything like this before._

The image he sends is achingly familiar: joined hands. The fingers slotted tightly together. A grip that says _We are one_ and _You are free_ at the same time.

“I – that was you, then?” Charles asks. “On the way to Shaw?”

Erik sits up abruptly, and Charles growls as he’s dislodged from his comfortable position. “Erik.”

“I thought that was you, Charles. I thought you were trying to reassure me, to keep me prepared for the fight.”

He stares, then. “I was, but I never used that image.” Pause, and he looks down at his hands. One of them is still joined with one of Erik’s. “I – but no, I do not care about where it came from. Did it help you?”

Erik smiles. “It did.”

“Then that’s what’s important,” Charles says, firmly. _And it’s what I would like. I know I’ve changed since – since the beach._

 _Only as you thought necessary._ Erik’s mental voice is matter-of-fact, and full of faith. _You’ve had to learn some terrible lessons. But you’re still Charles Xavier, aren’t you?_

“I think?” he says, and he follows that up with a laugh that is only partly self-deprecating.

“You are,” Erik says. “They look up to you, now. Every single one of them. They believe in you. They trust you.”

“I am hardly the only one – they run to you, too, and to Raven. To Moira.”

“But they find you first. Which is as it should be – no, don’t interrupt. The children need you, Charles, and you understand them. And that’s why I have faith.” Erik brings their joined hands up to his mouth for a kiss. “I believe in you still, Charles. I believe you’re leading us all to do the right thing.”

He feels his breath hitch in his chest and he doesn’t know why. So he settles for saying Erik’s name, for leaning against him, for murmuring: “Do you think we should begin to accept new students?”

Erik’s answering smile is warm and beautiful. “Yes, Charles. Soon.”

 _Soon,_ he repeats, and he lets himself reach for hope, for a future. Erik’s hands, wrapped around both of his. _Together._

[the end]


End file.
